Sermon on Ash Wednesday - Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters

May it be given to me to speak in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Please do be seated.

Is not this the fast that I chose? To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. You won't hear this much preached about, so you'd be forgiven for not knowing about it, but according to the Book of Common Prayer, and the canons of the Church of England, today, Ash Wednesday, is one of two days of fasting in the liturgical year, alongside Good Friday. That means that Ash Wednesday and Good Friday merit what the canons call, Special Observance.

In the Anglican tradition, the rules on what Special Observance actually means, and what fasting actually is, are lamentably fuzzy, leading to the somewhat confused idea in the wider world of giving something up for Lent, which has become something of a societal game of personal chicken. Can you really give up chocolate for 40 days? Happily, our Roman brothers and sisters give us the direction that we need. Fasting is required for all Christians between ages 18 and 59, who are in reasonable health.

For the days of fasting, Christians in this bracket are to eat one full meal and two smaller portions, which together don't count as a second meal. Meat is to be abstained from entirely, and every effort is to be made to receive the Eucharist. Isn't this all rather legalistic? I hear good Anglicans cry the world over.

Surely God cares more about what we do with our hearts than what we do with our bodies? After all, Jesus broke the Sabbath rules and then justified himself by saying that the Sabbath and its rules were made for people, not people for the Sabbath. Well, on the one hand, the Old Testament reading that you've just heard might seem to support you, liturgical mavericks that I know you all are. The prophet Isaiah cried out for God, such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard from on high.

Is such the fast that I choose a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down with a head like a bulrush or to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? The prophet Isaiah wasn't, of course, the only one to speak out against the liturgy and ritual that belonged in the temple. The prophet Amos famously said on God's behalf, I hate, I despise your festivals. Yet, lest we misunderstand and throw the liturgical baby out with the bathwater, neither Amos nor Isaiah were rejecting ritual in and of itself, but ritual without justice.

Ritual throughout the Old Testament, since there have been human beings worshipping God, has always meant to be an outward expression of an inward holiness. What God despised, as Isaiah pointed out, was ritual that had become an empty shell severed from righteousness. The law had always made the link between the outside ritual and the inside, inner life, clear.

When it says in Deuteronomy 10, verse 16, circumcise then the foreskin of your heart and do not be stubborn any longer. Circumcision, of course, was the ritual of the people of God. And yet, as Deuteronomy points out, the ritual in and of itself is useless if it doesn't change you.

Deuteronomy 10:16

But time and again, the people of God failed to make this connection. They treated ritual as a means to appease God, rather than a way to be transformed by him. And so this was the message that the prophets tirelessly repeated.

God is not indifferent to ritual, but ritual alone is not enough. Worship that does not change the heart, that does not lead to justice, is hollow. And this is why Isaiah's words still have force for us today.

Because the temptation, even today, especially on a day like Ash Wednesday, when we engage in ritual, is to treat the observance as an end in itself. So why are we bothering? Why are you submitting to having ashes on your forehead? Why have you bothered with fasting? Because ritual, used properly, is designed to change us. The Old Testament isn't full of ritual just because the people of God happen to like playing dress-up.

It is full of ritual because human beings are, have always been, physical creatures. And rituals throughout human history have been used as a way for us to symbolize and therefore actualize a change of state from one being to another. When Abraham, Isaac and Jacob committed to circumcision for themselves and their sons, they weren't just committing to a random medical procedure.

They were marking their flesh in a permanent and irrevocable way to show their covenanted relationship with God. When Aaron was given the lengthy and complicated rituals of cleansing and wearing different vestments to offer sacrifice and incense before the Ark of the Covenant in the tent of meeting in the wilderness, it wasn't just because he fancied a bit of a play. It was because he needed to understand and the people of God needed to understand that Aaron was presenting himself before the creator of the universe as a representative of his people.

When Solomon constructed the temple with its many courts, he wasn't just making an ornate building to show off. He had palaces for that. He was building the place where God's presence would dwell with his people.

Ritual, symbolizing and actualizing a change to holiness. But ritual, when it is misused, leads not to transformation but hypocrisy. And this is the pattern that we see played out in our gospel reading.

Those who ought to have been transformed by their worship, the priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, the religious rulers who had engaged in ritual every day, probably for years, instead learn to use that ritual not as a method of grace but as a weapon. So we turn to our gospel reading. A woman caught in an admittedly sinful act, dragged naked into the streets.

Remember, when they say caught in the act of adultery, they mean caught in the act of adultery. This poor woman thrown before Jesus, in front of her friends, her family, her peers, to be judged by men she probably didn't know who publicly demanded her brutal execution. The men who committed this act used ritual for its own sake.

They were religious men who had failed to learn the lesson of religion, that they were fallible human beings in need of God's grace, just as this poor woman was. Their religion had taught them nothing. And so Jesus had to cut through their religion.

He had to teach them, as he taught consistently through the gospels, that legalism without love is hypocrisy and that true righteousness is found not in condemning others, but in knowing your own need for mercy. Jesus confronted these religious men with a truth that cut to the heart of their hypocrisy. Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.

With those words, the lesson that they ought to have learned years ago finally struck home. Those men were sinners, just like everyone else, just like the poor woman they dragged out into the streets. And so if she deserved death, then so did they.

They didn't want to die. They didn't want to be stoned. And so they required mercy.

And to require mercy, they had to give mercy. Who was left? Jesus alone. The one who had a right to throw a stone, and yet he showed who God is.

He said simply, go your way and from now on do not sin again. And so the question for us today is, will our fasting, our prayers, our rituals do anything to us? Will they shape us into people who have stones in their hands, ready to judge? Or will they strip us of our self-righteousness and make us people of grace? Because let me be clear, if you're fasting, and the ashes that you're about to receive don't change your heart, if you're not willing to change, then you might as well leave. This has nothing for you.

Instead, these ashes must remind you of your frailty, remind you that you are a creature dependent on God's grace, remind you that if anyone deserves death, you do. You need mercy, and so you need to give mercy. You need to hear those words.

Let anyone who is among you, who is without sin, be the first to cast a stone. By remembering that we are sinners saved by grace, able to live because the one who could cast a stone at us chooses not to, we are able to show grace to the people around us. Those frail, broken human beings who annoy us every day by those mistakes that we would never make in a million years.

Those dirty sinners who do terrible things that we would never commit. Perhaps when our fasting is done, and when the ashes have been on our forehead, we will be humbled. And then, perhaps, by the grace of God, our worship will lead us to where worship must always lead.

To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. Amen.